The Real Mound Builders

One of the joys of my childhood growing up in Illinois was my parents taking us to Mississippian mound sites and letting us hang out at the museums. Often the museums would have dioramas of various activities that were supposed to have occurred at the sites; one that I remember specifically was of the process of building the mound itself.

Up until recently, certainly in the 1960s when I was a kid, archaeologists believed that most mound construction was completed by carrying basketloads of soil to be placed in a heap. There was evidence of this: within some mounds you can actually see the outlines of soil heaps. Mound scholars often calculated the labor it would take to build a mound, based on an estimated number of basketloads.

However, a recent study of mound construction using geophysical techniques and reported by Sarah Sherwood and Tristram Kidder in an article called "The DaVincis of Dirt" shows us how building an earthwork required a far more complex process, both architecturally and ritually.

More Information

• Mounds, which describes some of the detail from Sherwood and Kidder.
• Moundbuilder Myth, which is a 19th century European-American mythology about who built the North American mounds
• Sherwood SC, and Kidder TR. 2011. The DaVincis of dirt: Geoarchaeological perspectives on Native American mound building in the Mississippi River basin. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30(1):69-87.